Reinvention of Conor McHugh a case for Na Fianna defence

REINVENTION: Conor McHugh of Na Fianna celebrates after his side's victory. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Timing. Conor McHugh could tell you a thing or two about that.

As a Dublin footballer, the Na Fianna forward finished up with four All-Ireland medals from a seven-season career yet didn't make the bench for a single final and never started a Championship game.

He made 20 appearances in all for Dublin across the National League and Championship during their glory era yet started just eight times, all in the league.

For a player who emerged from the U-21 ranks in 2014 with such a high billing, scoring 1-6 in that season's final defeat of Roscommon and emerging as the competition's Player of the Year, a bountiful senior career beckoned.

The following February, McHugh came on as a sub in Dublin's Round 1 league game against Cork at Pairc Ui Rinn.

He didn't score, however, didn't feature again in any game for Dublin that year and made just one more league appearance - against Roscommon in 2016 - before 2017. It was an early reminder for him of the ridiculously high bar required to play for Dublin in that era.

In any other county, McHugh would have been an ever present in the inside forward line, a predatory and often prolific scorer of goals and points. As recently as last August's Dublin SFC encounter with Raheny he scored 1-5 including a sumptuous goal worked off a clever one-two that had a neat left-footed kick pass threaded into the move, just to underline his vast skill set.

His problem? Bad timing, the very worst. Take the 2015 All-Ireland final, for instance, when Dublin beat Kerry. Dublin started with a forward line of Flynn, Connolly, Kilkenny, Bernard Brogan, Rock and Andrews that day. The forwards they brought on were Kevin McManamon and Alan Brogan.

Cormac Costello famously came on the following year in the final win over Mayo. Con O'Callaghan and Eoghan O'Gara were unused subs.

Even in 2017, after starting four league games and firing 1-7 across spring, McHugh couldn't make the 26 for that year's All-Ireland final with Bernard Brogan, Connolly, Costello, Flynn, McManamon and O'Gara all on the bench for that win over Mayo.

And so McHugh played out an inter-county career in the shadows, seven seasons in all between 2015 and 2021 when he simply found himself shoved down the pecking order in a list of generational forwards. His last game was at Kingspan Breffni in 2021 when manager Dessie Farrell, a clubmate whom McHugh won All-Ireland minor and U-21 medals under in 2012 and 2014, brought him on for Ciaran Kilkenny in garbage time of a league semi-final win over Donegal. There was no final that year, due to the pandemic, so Dublin shared the league title with Kerry. Did McHugh even get a medal? Only he knows, and how much it would have meant to him.

Now a decade on from those U-21 heroics in 2014, when he was the competition's most potent forward and Man of the Match in the final, McHugh has reinvented himself as a lynchpin defender in a Na Fianna hurling team chasing down All-Ireland success.

He was the outstanding full-back of this year's Leinster club championship and will pitch up in Thurles tomorrow ready to ruin the afternoon of a full-forward of Loughrea's choosing. If Na Fianna beat the Galway champions, they will join St Finbarr's of Cork as the only club to have reached All-Ireland club senior finals in both codes. Cuala can also join that elite crew next month.

The Barrs relied on a number of key dual players when they were at their peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s but McHugh and Donal Ryan are Na Fianna's only regular dual players. Footballer Tom Brennan was listed as an 'additional panel member' for the Leinster club hurling final.

If there was a criticism of McHugh in his Dublin football days, it was that he wasn't expending the same sort of energy as the likes of Bernard Brogan who spent his afternoons chasing space in crowded defences.

Yet McHugh's USP these days is his limp-like man-marking and dogged determination. He gave Adam Screeney a taste of that in Na Fianna's Leinster final win over Kilcormac-Killoughey at Croke Park. St Martin's and Wexford attacker Rory O'Connor got the same treatment in the semi-final at Parnell Park.

All of which brings us back to McHugh and his timing - which may have finally turned in his favour. In this sort of form and with Dublin now minus a commanding full-back following talisman Eoghan O'Donnell's high profile switch to the county footballers, could the answer to their number three problem be right under the nose of new Dubs manager O Ceallachain?

At the age of 30, McHugh will turn 31 in April, he may very well have found himself in the right place at the right time for the very first time.

O Ceallachain won't need any convincing regarding McHugh's credentials and while an inter-county hurling debut at the age of 30 would be beyond most, McHugh is clearly a one off with a decade of exposure to high performance setups and a unique ability to make it work.